Immediately Indech of the green leggings hurried a sizable pottery jug and two mugs over to the table. He bowed, set them down, looked his question. Receiving an equally silent reply by gesture, he poured both mugs full of dark golden liquid from which rose tendrils of steam. Indech glanced at the fire, seeing that it was blazing up all yellow and snapping. He looked again at his lord. Lugaid waved a hand: With another bow-and a glance at Milchu, who stood by the fire with his back to the room-Indech departed the chamber with its rush-strewn floor and cold-absorbing hangings over the fine red wood of the yew-tree.
The door closed on him. Milchu turned from the fire. Again with both hands he shot back the druidic cowl. He commenced loosing the laces at the robe’s throat; they ran down to a point approximately horizontal with his nipples.
Then did he bare a pectoral pendant that was strange indeed, on the chest of a man in the robe of a druid of the Celts.
The Egyptians of centuries agone had formed the device of the male triad and the woman’s parts; a loop atop two straight bars, one set perpendicular to the center of the other so that they formed three. Thus the male and female united, a symbol of the creation of life, and Life everlasting of the faith of Set and Horus and Osiris. After them the Romans used a similar design, formed of timbers, for the execution of criminals. Ankh, those of Egypt called it; the Sign of Life. Crux, those of the more latterly “world” conquerors termed it; the sign of Death. On it they had slain one Yeshua-Iesu in their tongue, changed in Eirrin to Iosa-for sedition and the stirring up of the common folk against the priests… and, far more seriously, against the togaed representatives of Rome’s might. Along with the fish, the sign’ was adopted by the Friends, later called Saints by some and Christians by others.
Though they claimed that this cross, like the open one of old Egypt, represented and promised life everlasting, there were many and many who pointed out that the female was closed against life and further that the sign signified pain and slow death, and a dead god.
Though he had curbed it in himself now, Lugaid had been known to refer to Iosa Chriost who was Jesus Christus as the Dead God, and the thought crossed his mind now as he gazed upon that which hung on Milchu’s chest.
No druid wore the cross of Iosa Chriost.
PART ONE
Chapter One:
The Plotters
The cross jumped and gleamed on the chest of the High-king’s visitor when the man coughed. Watching this priest of Jesus come out of the disguising robe, High-king Lugaid reflected that it must sore have irked Milchu to wear the robe of the Old Faith over his execution symbol. Iosa was the enemy of all other gods; Christianity and its “Saints” were the enemy of all other beliefs; the druids of the Old Faith and the priests of the New were hardly friends!
Lugaid grinned sourly. Toying with the mug of mulled wine, he reflected on how the former shepherd-slave had returned here to Eirrin-from Rome-preaching the New Faith. He attacked the old ways and beliefs directly, that Padraigh or Patriche, claiming that while as all knew the druids could with their powers bring on darkness, only Jesus the Christus brought light. And he had thrown down the great statue of Crom Cruach and its attending statuary on the Plain of Slecht. Nor had that ancient god of Eirrin, no nor Behl either, done aught to avenge the sacrilege.
Those there were who began to say that Padraigh’s god was God. His faith spread throughout the land of mighty warriors. Somehow the sons of Eirrin took the dictates of peacefulness more seriously than the people of the continent; their Saints slew Saints and all the in the name of Jesus whom they called Christus as though it were his name. Soon, Lugaid mused without pleasure, Padraigh had converted many. Aye, even including the wife of High-king Laegair, for he put guilt on her, and on his chief advisor as well, so that Laegair was no enemy of the Saints. Well Lugaid remembered the changes in his mother, and the change in the relationship between her and his royal father.
Yet even that had not been enough for the Saints. They wanted all.
They want all, Lugaid the king thought, and his hand clutched the tighter at his tankard.
Still, the Ard-righ of Eirrin was no enemy of the Old Faith either, so that druids remained welcome throughout most of the land. That proved not sufficiently satisfactory to the dark-robed priests who came to Eirrin after Padraigh. That stern man with his great pointed staff preached that which had aided the toppling of the Empire of Rome and now survived it in quest of an empire of its own.
No, Lugaid mac Laegair mused, gazing on the equally stern-faced opportunist Milchu, the Saints will settle for naught less than ownership of Eirrin-and the world. And this fanatical follower of that dead son of a wright of the Jews…
Lugaid saw Milchu for what he was, for all his ascetic face and pretensions. In the tradition of Padraigh himself was this man, and yet steps beyond him, for the priests had power now in Eirrin, and they were far from averse to using it.
This weasel face seeks only personal power and influence, Lugaid mused, and all in the name of his religion. It’s more willing this man is even than I or my uncle to set aside his moral convictions and the gentle teachings of his god, for after all there is always their Confession to Him… and surely to Milchu mac Roigh the achievement of the goal ever justifies the means used in its attainment! Indeed, when once man on the ridge of the earth feels that the warm breath of his god is upon him, it’s little there is he cannot justify in his mind!
A fitting servant for Lugaid mac Laegair then, Lugaid mac Laegair thought. Once the priest had served his purposes, the man with the ever-set lips and stern brow would easily be handled, one way or the other! For surely I, Lugaid Ard-righ thought, am the superior of any at crafty plotting, though I be plotted against on all sides by so many, at all times.
He was sure, in point of fact, that Milchu the priest plotted independent of him. For who did not? Were it not for the High-king’s supremely powerful uncle Muirchetach mac Erca-and my own genius-Lugaid would surely have been wrested from this highest of abodes years agone. Of this he was convinced.
“Ye passed safely and with ease,” he said aloud, “for surely none would expect to find a priest of Rome abroad, alurk in the oak-green robe of a druid!”
The priest tossed aside the robe-to the floor, and with the movement his pectoral cross of silver flashed, for fire and candles lit the room well if fitfully. Nor did he show amusement.
“It’s no priest of Rome I am, son of L-” he began and broke off to cough. “Son of Laegair, but a priest of Iosa Chriost our Saviour-a priest of Eirrin, as ye be her High-king!”
With a slow blink of both grey eyes amid the disappearance of his smile, Eirrin’s High-king nodded.
“The ways of God are strange,” Milchu said. “I but use the tools he places before me, lord King.” And he spurned that latest tool, the druidic robe, with his well-shod foot.
“Aye. It’s not the psalms of your god ye were to bring me, though; but information. Sit, Milchu. And speak.”
Milchu sat, sipped, leaned forward to fix the king with a gaze from the bright round eyes of a fanatic.
“Information, aye. From Connacht.”
“Ah, Connacht, Connacht. Long did it supply our land with its High-kings… until I, grandson of Niall Noiqiallach, united with the other ui-Neill and even those of Leinster, and overthrew Connacht’s power and strangle-hold on this hill! Dead is my predecessor Ailill Molt; dead is Connachtish power.” He too leaned forward, his hand only toying unconsciously with the design of his mug’s handle. “And doubtless Connachtish nobles plot, and plot! Eh, Milchu? Eh,eh?”